Does the Teaching of king Amenemhat I refer to the murder
of the king?

There are two conflicting views, each based upon the
content of the Teaching.

(1)
the wording of the night episode and the appearance of the old king in a 'revelation
of truth' have been taken to indicate that Amenemhat I did not survive the attack.
The Ramesside ascription of the composition to
a man named Khety, writing for Senusret I, would seem to provide circumstantial
evidence in support

(2)
the wording of section 8 seems unambiguous - this is the clearest Egyptian phrasing
for the institution of coregency, stating that the coregency had not yet started
at the time of the attack
I argue below that both views may in fact be correct: note though that there
is no direct evidence or explicit ancient statement on the subject.

Complicating the issue, recent decades have seen a debate
over whether there ever was a co-regency between Amenemhat I and Senusret I.
This seems to be settled by the following points:

a stela from Abydos records as if equivalent year
30 of Amenemhat I and year 10 of Senusret
I

the earliest construction records for the pyramid
of Senusret I date to his year 10

the names of Amenemhat I and Senusret I are intertwined
as those of the reigning sovereign on three fragments of a lintel found in
1987 at Mostorod, near Iunu (Heliopolis)

The hieratic marks on building blocks at the pyramids
of Amenemhat I and Senusret I at Lisht give some hint of the political historical
developments in their reigns. They indicate not only that Senusret I did not
begin his own pyramid until his tenth year of reign, which would be the first
year of his sole rule after a ten-year coregency (as on the Abydos stela), but
also that work began on the pyramid of Amenemhat I only in his year 20. The
pyramids at Lisht are positioned on the borderline between Upper and Lower Egypt,
and the modern name of the site is generally taken to derive from the name of
the Residence founded by Amenemhat I, Itjtawyamenemhat 'Amenemhat takes up the
Two Lands' (usually abbreviated to Itjtawy).

Taken together the data suggest that year 20 of Amenemhat
I saw three momentous changes:

creation of a single regal base at Itjtawy, the first
attested since the fall of the Old Kingdom (about 2150 BC) two centuries earlier

decision to build for the cult centre and burial
place of the king a pyramid complex on the model of the Old Kingdom

decision to install as co-regent the son and intended
successor Senusret I

These could be interpreted as the political response
to an unrecorded threat, and one plausible motivation would be an assassination
attempt against the king. In this case, the Teaching would refer directly to
the atempt to kill the king before (and prompting) the coregency, in accordance
with the evidence of section 8 of the content. However, from the wording of
sections 1 and 6-7, the Teaching does seem to be posthumous, and its impact
would have been strongest if the king had indeed fallen victim to assassination.
Here the date of the king's death becomes important: year 30. This would have
been the year in which the country prepared for the rites of the sed
festival, in which the powers of the king were renewed for the benefit of
all creation. This seems to have been an intensified version of the New Year
rites, when the king saw the cosmos through the perilous five marginal days
at the end of the year. In the New Kingdom (about 1550-1069 BC), surviving papyrus
documents testify to the use of wax figures and incantations as part of a plot
to overcome the bodyguard and kill king Ramesses
III: the sed festival was a moment of great potential for renewal, but it
was also a moment of danger, the point when the established order stood weakest
at the end of a long period.

Perhaps then, year 30 brought the threat of the night
before the sed festival to Amenemhat I: his bodyguard was turned against
him, and he failed to survive.

Perhaps this fatal episode only became possible subject-matter for literary
treatment precisely because there had been an earlier failed attempt: the composer
could not refer to the most heinous crime directly, but could work his words
around the two assassination bids, the one that failed in year 20, and, concealed
beneath this, the one that killed the king in year 30.

These are speculative reflections: the core evidence is on the one side literary,
and on the other side circumstantial, from the monuments. However, such a background,
even as a speculative possibility, may provide a modern reader with an 'emotive
context' within which to stimulate appreciation of the content, attaining the
same fear that filled at least one Egyptian at the death of Amenemhat I, in
another literary composition, the Life of Sanehat
(Sinuhe).